In recent years, a need is growing for expansion of a display region of a display device such as a liquid crystal display device.
In a display panel, two substrates (i.e., an array substrate and a counter substrate) are arranged so as to face each other, and are bonded together by a sealing material applied in a frame shape along outer peripheral edges of the substrates. A display region where an image is displayed is formed inside relative to the frame-shaped sealing material. In order to expand the display region of the display device, research and development have been made for narrowing of a frame region around the display region.
The sealing material contains, e.g., glass spacers such as ground glass fibers and/or conductive beads as sealing material ingredients (see, e.g., Patent Documents 1 and 2). The ground glass fibers function as spacers configured to constantly maintain a distance between the substrates to control a cell thickness. The ground glass fibers each have a fiber diameter which is set corresponding to the distance between the substrates. The conductive beads function as transfer members configured to allow vertical conduction between a common electrode provided so as to cover the entirety of the counter substrate and a drive circuit provided in the frame region of the array substrate.
For the narrowing of the frame region, the width of the sealing material may be decreased, or the area of a region other than the sealing material may be decreased (e.g., the area of a region between a sealing region and the display region is decreased).